Crafts­man shapes his legacy

WOODTURNER Colin Hor­ton (82) has signed off on mak­ing wooden hand­crafted pens for grad­u­ates from John Sep­ti­mus Roe Angli­can Com­mu­nity School in Mirra­booka.

The Cur­ram­bine res­i­dent has spent three months ev­ery year for the past 22 years to cre­ate pens from sheoak – some­thing he treated as a hobby.

How­ever, the arthri­tis in his hands caught up with him while he was mak­ing more than 160 pens for this year’s grad­u­ates. He de­cided to re­tire be­cause he can no longer main­tain his high lev­els of pre­ci­sion.

The school pre­sented him with a gift and cer­tifi­cate at the Year 12 vale­dic­tory din­ner last month.

Mr Hor­ton re­called when his man­ager at Sal­va­tion Army in Joon­dalup sug­gested he make the unique pens for the school.

“Orig­i­nally the wood that was used for mak­ing the pens came from the school’s grounds,” he said.

“John Sep­ti­mus Roe is a mas­sive school and they were ex­pand­ing like mad.

“They were cut­ting the trees down and they had a very pro­gres­sive gar­dener in charge who was cut­ting logs for me. I was al­low­ing the logs to dry and cut­ting them up and mak­ing the pen blanks out of that.”

Mr Hor­ton said he was sad to stop mak­ing pens.

“I love work­ing with wood – there is a tremen­dous amount of sat­is­fac­tion when you turn some­thing,” he said.

Pic­tures: Mar­tin Ken­nealey www.com­mu­ni­typix.com.au d488002

Woodturner Colin Hor­ton has crafted thou­sands of pens for school grad­u­ates in­side his Cur­ram­bine work­shop.